My Lords, I gave notice of my intention to oppose Clause 12 and I support the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. Indeed, the response from the Minister to what I thought was a reasonable proposal to bring forward an exemption for conditions that are clearly reasonable has strengthened my resolve to support any move to delete the whole clause.
The reasons for that are twofold. I do not want to repeat what I said earlier, but one thing pre-commencement conditions do is overcome the situation at the moment whereby developers are paying the cost when it comes to pre-commencement conditions but the benefits are borne by other people—normally the local community or the environment, or through biodiversity benefits. Without pre-commencement conditions, of course the developer will say, “We don’t want to bear these costs”. Pre-commencement conditions account for those benefits—those externalities—and allow local planning authorities to ensure that those benefits that accrue to others can be accounted for.
In the Minister’s letter on what the unreasonable pre-commencement conditions are, will he also include a list of what are, in his mind, reasonable conditions? It seems to me that drainage is very much a reasonable condition, given that the benefits are accrued by home owners and the community but the costs are borne by the developer.
The second reason I am now more minded to support the opposition to Clause 12 builds on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord True. The Minister says that we will want local authorities, if they have the gumption, to turn these applications down. But let us consider a housing application of, say, 20 homes in a rural area. Let us say that a fairly reasonable, as I would see it, pre-commencement condition is attached for sustainable draining solutions but the developer does not agree. Those houses have agreement in the local plan and the neighbourhood plan. Is the Minister saying that this Government want local authorities to turn down applications that have the support of the local plan and the neighbourhood plan because they cannot get agreement on a perfectly reasonable proposal —in this case for drainage—that is part of a pre-commencement condition? That is what the Minister said. This is the nuclear option. If the local authority does not get agreement from the developer for sustainable drainage systems, the only option it has is to turn
it down. That will increase delays and conflict in the system, which the Bill is rightly trying to stop. If we want to build homes, it seems to me that this nuclear option will not deliver what the Government want. Therefore, I support the proposal that Clause 12 should not stand part of the Bill.